low rise bars?

Anyone using low rise bars? By low rise I mean the 3/4 inch rise versus the standard 1.5 inch rise. Wondered what people who have been using them thought of them?? What are the advantages? Quicker steering? How about disadvantages?

Damn dude...kinda runnin after the bus with your pants down here, huh? J/K...
Low bar height is the new shiz, low and W I D E.
I think the best description I've heard is "...feels like my front wheel is just an extension of my arms..."

I think bar-height is a combination of your height, bb-drop and riding style.
I used to ride the lowest possible front end, but I found out I liked different bar-height on different bikes (factors above).
I think the correct bar/stem setup will let your arms, legs and back feel free to move and adapt for the terrain.

Bar height seems to be just to be one of the tools to determine how close your hands are to the top of your front wheel. Other tools incluse the rise on your stem, stack height and fork height. I feel like I'm explaining the obvious here?

For myself with the boxxer on my big bike, I like everything else as low as I can get it to compensate for how tall my fork is. So i've got a direct mount stem, low stack height and low rise bars.

On my smaller bike with a lyric set at 140mm, I have bars with more rise, because I don't need to make up for a tall fork.

I seriously doubt just the rise of your bars will make you a better rider, unless a higher or lower rise puts you more in your comfort zone since everyone rides better when they feel more connected to their bike.

Everyone's pretty dead-on with the bike setup = bar height explanations. I mean, it's only common sense. But I DO think there is a useable limit to how wide bars should be and they passed it at 29" for several reasons(all just my opinion, doesn't mean ****!), but first off the leverage on a bar drastically increases the further out your hands get, plus I think your reaction time gets slower as well with too-wide bars. Think of it as an old Caddy(I have one, heehee) with a much too large steering wheel. You can't really just rip the car any direction, you have to move that steering wheel twice as far to get it to respond. Which also feeds back in the other direction though, too, they won't be getting ripped out of your hands as fast. But to a point! I think it should stay pretty relative to your shoulder width, but 28" for about %80 of the average sized rider seems about right.

I seriously doubt just the rise of your bars will make you a better rider, unless a higher or lower rise puts you more in your comfort zone since everyone rides better when they feel more connected to their bike.

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I dunno....I know this is an extreme case...but we've all seen Bender on his stupid Super monster right? He will die defending that dumbass fork and his 3" riser bars(those might be a thing of the past now, I hope), but you can SEE that it negatively affects his riding. Let's not make this a BenderBash thread for the love of all things good. I'm only pointing out an example of equipment pros and cons! But when he jumps, drops, etc his hands are already at chest level. He pulls up a tiny bit on the bars and he's instantly looped out and out of control, despite that his front wheel didn't really come up that far thanks to that fork. Now, back into DH world: I agree that bar height should directly follow BB height, and a few other involved details. If your bars are at 40" and you have a 15" BB height, it's gonna feel like an XC bike and you'll look like you're waiting to get paddled with a 2x4. You also won't be able to lift that front end. And I've always felt that bars(bar height...from the ground) that are too high directly affect my pedaling ability. Feels like your resting on the pedals/pivot area too much to really spin, and the bars feel kinda "loose..."

I ride pretty flat bars (.5 inch rise) and dont have any trouble pulling up the front end. I feel like I am in a more aggressive position for cornering and like I am more connected to the bike to lift it over rough sections or pop off of lips. I have noticed that moto riders tend to have respectively higher bars than we do

I come from many years of riding motocross/dirt bikes, so wide bars have always been my preference. My renthals on my ktm are stock 31" wide and at times I feel like I want them a little wider. All my bikes, even my xc, have 28" wide bars on them at present. Years ago, when it was super hard to find a full 28" wide bar, people used to make comments about my ultra wide bars........now everybody wants at least 28" or wider!

Point is, I want the 31" Gravity or 29" Sunline bars for the simple fact of wanting to try it out.......worst case scenario will have me cutting them down to 28" if wide doesn't feel right.

These are very good points, I feel the same way.
When my bars feel too tall in relation to my pedals, I feel that I lose some ability to absorb suspension rebound on obstacles. Examples are rollers and such. I think that generally speaking you want your bar to bb height differential to be within a certain range depending on your height, to be placed in a good position for fore and aft traction. When my bars are too tall I feel my front end washes out.
Coming from BMX I like my bars to be low enough to be able to pull on them when sprinting and starting. More leverage = more torque = faser acceleration.

I dunno....I know this is an extreme case...but we've all seen Bender on his stupid Super monster right? He will die defending that dumbass fork and his 3" riser bars(those might be a thing of the past now, I hope), but you can SEE that it negatively affects his riding. Let's not make this a BenderBash thread for the love of all things good. I'm only pointing out an example of equipment pros and cons! But when he jumps, drops, etc his hands are already at chest level. He pulls up a tiny bit on the bars and he's instantly looped out and out of control, despite that his front wheel didn't really come up that far thanks to that fork. Now, back into DH world: I agree that bar height should directly follow BB height, and a few other involved details. If your bars are at 40" and you have a 15" BB height, it's gonna feel like an XC bike and you'll look like you're waiting to get paddled with a 2x4. You also won't be able to lift that front end. And I've always felt that bars(bar height...from the ground) that are too high directly affect my pedaling ability. Feels like your resting on the pedals/pivot area too much to really spin, and the bars feel kinda "loose..."

Dirtbikes have 31 inch wide bars, but dirtbikes are a lot more heavy and you need the extra leverage to help transition them in corners.

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Umm, yeah, but leverage is a good thing no matter what kind of "bike" your riding no matter the weight or size! In the moto world, the handlebar width argument rages on much the same as it does in the dh/mtb world....

I like my bars to be low enough to be able to pull on them when sprinting and starting. More leverage = more torque = faser acceleration.

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Exactly why i'm looking into low rise bars. When I have parking lot tested other bikes with them i def. feel more connected to the bike. Granted a lot of variables come into play like the rise on your stem, fork height, # of spacers under the stem, etc.

How do you like the g lites? do you even find them to wide for dh racing? like in tight sections? can you give some pros and cons?

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They are freeking huge....they are also a bit heavy (most likely to deal with the forces from a bar that width). I will be runnning the sunlines (they are on the bike) as I like the bend better (been running the 28"ers last season), they are lighter, and they feel plenty wide.

I have not ridden the g-lites as I got them in January, the weather here is so-so at best this time of year, and I am up to my eyeballs finnishing my last year elec. engineering undergrad (25 hours a week in lab, 8 hour homework assignments, etc..)...so no time to ride or do anything else for that matter.

i won a set of bars that were lower and wider than my old answer protapers and as soon as i put them on i could feel the difference. i'm starting to think that something like the sunlines would be a good future upgrade once i beat on my current bars for awhile. that said, i'm not sure i understand having bars as wide as the gravity lites.

i've been running the sunlines in the 29.5 size for a couple months, and got a set of the gravity lite's the other day. these things are HUGE. I really dont know how i can ride everyday with them, it seems as though everything slows down, until you hit a corner 2x as fast as usual